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Letter to the Editor
9/10/2017, 10:12pm

Letter: A large, yet exclusive campus

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The University of Minnesota’s Alumni Association is known for its large network. Generations still attend football games, go to networking events and help incoming and prospective students get accustomed to campus life.

As an alumna of the College of Liberal Arts and having four years of professional experience, I have learned skills that the school did not provide. After graduating or even after declaring your major, you may end up going into something completely different from your major. I was in communications with no direct career path. I ended up going the business route and went into marketing analytics. As a student, I wanted to take courses that were in Carlson, but I was not able to because I was not admitted into Carlson. Even as a communications student, if anyone wanted to go the corporate route, to gain actual relatable experience in that field, you had to be admitted in the Journalism School to take its courses. We were not able to take any of those classes; instead it was all theory based and quite academic. As an example, the kind of classes we were allowed to take taught us to use theories and relate them to ancient Roman documents (COMM 3601).

I have now taken an intense program to be a software developer. However, to get an entry level role, I wanted to attend a CSE Career Fair that is being held this month. I was not allowed to attend solely because I was not admitted into the College of Science of Engineering.

I seriously thought the University of Minnesota was supposedly an inclusive community, but I never knew that each individual college would be so exclusive. Any student can take a class as random as artificial insemination or pig judging, but they cannot take courses that might help them professionally in the future. After working in companies such as Target and Best Buy, all University students should get the ability to take the courses they wish and be able to attend any career fair.